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    <h1 class="post-title p-name" itemprop="name headline">From project to profession: going indie on NewsBlur</h1>
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      <time class="dt-published" datetime="2012-03-01T11:48:00-05:00" itemprop="datePublished">Mar 1, 2012
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    <p>Exactly four months ago, Jason Kottke found my project, <a href="http://www.newsblur.com">NewsBlur</a>, and tweeted:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Looking like @<a href="https://twitter.com/newsblur">newsblur</a> is the @<a href="https://twitter.com/pinboard">pinboard</a> of Google’s deliciousing of Reader.</p>

  <p>— Jason Kottke (@jkottke) <a href="https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/131434505947979776">November 1, 2011</a></p>
</blockquote>

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<p>In that time, every measure of traffic, paid subscriptions, and community feedback has cleared new heights on my revered munin charts. But I kept my full-time job and only worked on NewsBlur as a side-project, as I have been doing for the past two years.</p>

<p>I’m at a slow but steady trickle of users, enough of whom convert into paying premium subscribers to pay for the increasing number of servers (now costing almost $800/month!). But a vocal support forum and an ever-increasing trickle of payments aren’t what convinced me to dedicate myself full-time to my humble project.</p>

<p>What convinced me is that life’s too short.</p>

<h2 id="the-only-way-to-do-great-work-is-to-love-what-you-do">The only way to do great work is to love what you do</h2>

<blockquote>
  <p>Yesterday was my last day at Tasty Labs. Today is my first day as a full-time indie developer.</p>

  <p>— Samuel Clay (@samuelclay) <a href="https://twitter.com/samuelclay/status/172737665182076928">February 23, 2012</a></p>
</blockquote>

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<p>I’m following the better-half of my inner-Jobs and choosing to follow the path of doing what I love to do.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> It’s going to be expensive on my part. There will be no paycheck, health insurance runs out in a few months, and even on an exceptionally good day, premium subscriptions bring in only about half of my former salary.</p>

<h2 id="paying-customers-are-keeping-things-afloat">Paying customers are keeping things afloat</h2>

<p>It’s not that big a risk. Users are choosing to pay and choosing how much to pay. Some users opt to pay a $12/year at a buck a month, while some choose to pay $36/year at $3/month. The servers cost roughly .75x what premium subscriptions bring in. That gap between cost and revenue is growing steadily, as the servers I have are running at 25% capacity.</p>

<p>Maciej Ceglowski, of Pinboard fame, has written extensively about the scourge of free services not taking payments from users. From a recent February 2012 presentation, he <a href="http://pinboard.in/talks/biz.pdf">writes of the three types of services</a> [pdf]:</p>

<blockquote>
  <h3 id="business-model-1-charge-money">Business Model #1: Charge Money</h3>

  <p>This is a groundbreaking new approach where a site accepts fungible tokens of value in return for a product or service.</p>

  <h3 id="business-model-2-burn-money">Business Model #2: Burn Money</h3>

  <p>￼Find a sponsor with deep pockets and run at a loss indefinitely.</p>

  <h3 id="business-model-3-offer-a-free-service-and-fail">Business Model #3: Offer a Free Service and Fail</h3>

  <p>The most popular business model has been to offer a free service and then shut down (or transition to model #1).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You can look forward to new features, bug fixes, and an unending stream of progress, all because you’re paying me for the work I do. It’s a simple setup that helps me sleep at night. I’m building an honest product. You know what you’re paying for. And NewsBlur will continue to be ad-free, because ads are not part of the product that I want to use myself.</p>

<h2 id="so-much-time-so-little-to-do-strike-that-reverse-it">So much time, so little to do. Strike that! Reverse it.</h2>

<p>In what I can only consider a bizarrely wonderful coincidence, I see this the morning after I declared freedom:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/samuelclay">samuelclay</a> Good luck!</p>

  <p>— Google Reader (@googlereader) <a href="https://twitter.com/googlereader/status/173084829880037376">February 24, 2012</a></p>
</blockquote>

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<p>The wind’s at my back, and I’m feeling pretty good about this.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></p>

<hr />

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<p>The worse-half of my inner-Jobs insists on perfection and never gets anything shipped. The balancing act between better and done is about the only constant in this crazy dream to be a self-sustaining indie dev. <a href="#fnref:1">↩︎</a></p>

<ol>
  <li></li>
</ol>

<p>You should <a href="https://github.com/samuelclay">follow NewsBlur’s development on Github</a>. I live on props, so that’d make me feel even better. <a href="#fnref:2">↩︎</a></p>


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